All posts tagged Lifestyle & Culture

A new survey by Japan’s health ministry shows that Japan’s younger people are overworked and more exhausted than their elders.

Japanese between the ages of 20 and 39 rated their happiness at 6.03 out of 10, compared with 6.25 for those between the ages of 40 and 64, and 6.92 for people over 65. Here are the highlights in three charts. Read More »

Tokyo, Kyoto and Fukuoka were ranked in the top 10 on this year’s most livable cities survey conducted by the London-based Monocle Magazine. We asked our readers on Facebook their opinion of the survey their choice of most livable city. Read More »

After recently being voted best destination for global travelers, Tokyo has ranked high again in a list of most livable cities compiled by the lifestyle and culture journal, Monocle Magazine.

Japan’s capital climbed two spots from last year and came in at number two in the London-based magazine’s eighth annual rankings. Kyoto and Fukuoka also made the top 10 list, which is created based on quality of life measures including crime rate, public transportation, culture and economy. Read More »

They look like carrots, taste like carrots, but they’re not carrots — at least not in terms of the satisfying crunch you get when you bite into one. But deception is exactly the point of food maker Nutri Co.’s meticulous approach to making soft food.

The company is the largest in Japan that specializes in creations for people, many of them elderly, who have a hard time swallowing. Read More »

Japan has long been notorious for its super-short summer vacations — it’s just five and a half weeks at the public school my seven-year-old daughter started in April. But just in case kids still have a little too much unstructured time on their hands, the school provided a big brown envelope stuffed with homework assignments. Read More »

Fuji Rock Festival is about the experience more than the itinerary, as it is impossible to see even most of the 226 bands playing across more than 12 stages from July 26 to 28 at Naeba Ski Resort.

“The thing I really like is the diversity in all the stages; it’s not just big American and British acts,” said James Smith, of the U.K. office of festival promoter Smash. “Audience members stumble across things they didn’t plan to see.” Read More »

Donald Richie, an expert on Japanese cinema, pictured in 2002. He died in Tokyo on Tuesday at the age of 88.

The news of the death Tuesday of Japanese cinema and culture expert Donald Richie drew appreciation from a country that credited the American for introducing Japan’s postwar culture to the world.

While Mr. Richie was best known for his book on Japan’s most famous directors, Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, he cast a spotlight on lesser-known figures as well. Movie director Shusuke Kaneko sent out a note via Twitter saying: “I owe him. He spotted my film ‘Summer Vacation In 1999′ and introduced it overseas. As a result, the movie was selected as a new film by a new director at New York Museum of Modern Art in 1988.”

“As a student, I learned from his books” on Kurosawa and Ozu, wrote another director, Takashi Shimizu. Read More »

South Korean actor Hyun Bin, in green coat, sings with fellow recruits during an admission ceremony for new soldiers at the Marine Corps Training Center in Pohang on March 7.

It was a bittersweet scene that looked like it could have come from a TV drama itself.

Hyun Bin – the star of this season’s most popular TV drama in South Korea and one that has built a huge following around Asia, “Secret Garden” – on Monday enrolled in the Marines to satisfy compulsory military service requirements.

And thousands of fans, mostly women and many from Japan and elsewhere, went to the Marines Corps Training Camp to wish him well. Some Japanese fans reportedly chartered buses from the Busan airport to the training camp site in Pohang.

The newest trend in Japanese tourism? Kojo Moe. It means “Factory Infatuation” and it’s the term used to describe people who are thrilled by the aesthetics of industrial factories. Daisuke Wakabayashi reports. Read More »

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Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com